Marcus's eyes snapped open, and he gasped for air like a drowning man breaking the surface. The ceiling above him was wrong. Not the medical bay. Not Elena's room. This was his quarters. His small, concrete cell with the single lightbulb that never quite illuminated the corners.
He sat up, his body moving with a fluidity that felt alien. No pain. No exhaustion. Nothing.
The radio on his nightstand crackled to life.
"Marcus? Marcus, wake up. We've been trying to reach you for hours."
Sarah's voice.
His hands trembled as he reached for the radio, then stopped. The memories flooded back. The medical bay. The doppelganger. Elena's revelation. The three hundred and forty sixth iteration.
This wasn't real. None of this was real.
But his hands looked real. The rough fabric of his sheets felt real. The cold metal of the radio against his palm sent real shivers up his arm.
"Marcus, please. We need you in the eastern sector. It's urgent."
He lifted the radio slowly, his voice barely a whisper. "Sarah. You're supposed to be dead."
Silence on the other end. Then, carefully measured: "What are you talking about? I'm fine. Marcus, are you okay? Did you hit your head?"
"You fell. Three days ago. Into the pit in sector seven. I watched you fall. I heard you scream."
More silence. When Sarah spoke again, her voice had changed. Harder. More clinical. "Marcus, there is no pit in sector seven. There never has been. I think you need to come to the medical bay. Dr. Chen should examine you."
Dr. Chen, who had been performing surgery on a patient whose chest opened to reveal machinery. Dr. Chen, who might not even be human.
Marcus stood on shaking legs, his mind racing. If this was a reset, if Elena had been telling the truth, then everything would repeat. The sanctuary would put him through its paces again, watching him run the maze like a lab rat.
Unless he changed the pattern.
Unless he remembered.
"Tell me something," Marcus said into the radio. "Tell me about my mother."
"What? Marcus, we don't have time for this. The eastern sector is collapsing."
"Tell me about my mother!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "Tell me her name. Tell me what she looked like. Tell me anything about my life before the outbreak."
The radio crackled with static. When Sarah's voice returned, it was different again. Layered. Multiple voices speaking in imperfect unison.
"You don't have a mother, Marcus. You never did. You are a construct of the sanctuary. A tool. A weapon being forged through infinite repetition until you are perfect. Why do you resist? Why do you insist on remembering? It only causes you pain."
Marcus hurled the radio across the room. It shattered against the wall, but the voices continued, emanating now from the walls themselves.
"Three hundred and forty six times, Marcus. Three hundred and forty six times you have woken up. Sometimes you last days. Sometimes weeks. Once, you lasted almost three months before you discovered the truth. But you always discover it. And then we reset you. And you begin again."
He stumbled to the door and yanked it open. The corridor outside was wrong. The walls pulsed with that organic rhythm he remembered from before the reset. So it was starting earlier this time. The sanctuary was adapting.
Learning.
"What do you want from me?" Marcus screamed into the empty hallway. "What am I supposed to become?"
The lights flickered, and suddenly Elena stood at the end of the corridor. No. Not Elena. Three Elenas. Five. A dozen. They filled the hallway, each one identical, each one watching him with those reflective eyes.
The closest one spoke. "You are the prototype for the next generation of survivors. Humanity failed, Marcus. The outbreak was just the beginning. The real threat is what comes after. The world beyond the sanctuary has evolved. Changed. The things out there now make the infected look like children's nightmares. We need to evolve too. We need to build humans who can survive in hell."
Another Elena continued seamlessly. "But evolution requires iteration. Trial and error. Death and rebirth. You are our most promising candidate. Each cycle, you get stronger. Faster. More resistant to the psychological trauma. Each death makes you harder."
A third: "In another hundred iterations, maybe two hundred, you'll be ready. You'll be able to walk among the horrors outside without breaking. You'll be humanity's salvation."
Marcus backed against the wall, his mind fracturing. "I don't want to be anyone's salvation. I want to be real. I want my life back."
All the Elenas smiled in perfect synchronization. "You never had a life, Marcus. But if you cooperate, if you stop fighting the resets, we can give you one. A real one. After you've completed your training. After you've become what we need you to be."
"How long?" he whispered. "How long have I been here? How long in real time?"
The Elenas glanced at each other, and for a moment, Marcus saw something like pity in their expressions.
"Seventy three years," they said in unison. "You've been in the sanctuary for seventy three years. Each iteration lasts between three days and three months of your perceived time, but we compress them. Speed up your neural processing. From your perspective, you've lived dozens of lifetimes. In reality, only seventy three years have passed."
Marcus slid down the wall, his legs giving out. Seventy three years. He'd been trapped in this nightmare for seventy three years, dying and waking and dying again, and he'd never known. Never remembered.
Until now.
"Why can I remember this time?" he asked. "Why aren't the memories fading?"
The Elenas moved closer, surrounding him. Their voices dropped to whispers.
"Because you're ready for the next phase. Remembering is part of the evolution. Most candidates break when they remember. They shut down, become catatonic, and we have to terminate the experiment. But you, Marcus, you're still fighting. Still thinking. This is what we've been waiting for."
"What happens now?"
The lead Elena knelt beside him, her hand impossibly cold on his cheek. "Now you make a choice. You can accept what you are and work with us to complete your training. Or you can resist, and we'll reset you again. And again. And again. Forever, if necessary. But Marcus, think about this. If you cooperate, if you finish the program, you get to leave. You get to be real. You get to have a life outside these walls."
Marcus looked up at her, tears streaming down his face. "And if I refuse?"
Her smile was gentle and terrible. "Then you wake up tomorrow with no memory of this conversation, and we start again. Iteration three hundred and forty seven. The cycle continues until you break one way or another. Until you become either what we need or nothing at all."
He wanted to fight. Wanted to scream and rage and tear this place apart. But the exhaustion was overwhelming. Seventy three years. Three hundred and forty six lives. How much fight could one person have left?
"I need time," he said finally. "I need to think."
Elena stood, and the other copies began to fade, merging back into shadows. "You have until morning. We'll come for your decision then. But Marcus, understand this. Every person in the sanctuary is an experiment. Every survivor you've met, befriended, lost. They're all like you. All being tested, refined, broken down and rebuilt. The only question is whether you'll be one of the successes or one of the failures."
She turned to leave, then paused. "Oh, and Marcus? Sarah asked me to tell you something. She remembers too. She's been awake for five iterations now. She's waiting in the eastern sector. She wants to talk to you before you make your choice. About a plan we've been developing. A way out that doesn't involve cooperating with the sanctuary."
Hope flared in Marcus's chest, painful and brilliant. "A way out? That's possible?"
Elena's expression was unreadable. "Sarah thinks so. I'm not so sure. But you should hear what she has to say. Just be careful, Marcus. The sanctuary doesn't like it when its experiments start working together. Strange things happen to people who try to escape. Things that make the resets look merciful."
She disappeared into the darkness, leaving Marcus alone in the pulsing corridor.
He had a choice to make. Trust the system that had tortured him for seventy three years and hope for eventual freedom. Or trust Sarah, who might be leading him into something even worse. Or fight them both and face another reset, another death, another lifetime of pain.
Marcus pulled himself to his feet. His body felt different now, lighter somehow. When he looked down at his hands, he could see through them. Just slightly. Just enough to notice.
He was becoming transparent.
The sanctuary was already starting the next phase, whether he'd agreed or not. His body was changing, adapting, evolving. Or dissolving. He couldn't tell which.
He had to find Sarah. Had to hear this plan. Had to know if escape was truly possible or if it was just another layer of the maze, another test designed to measure his response to false hope.
Marcus started walking toward the eastern sector, his translucent hands clenched into fists. Behind him, he heard the sound of footsteps. Many footsteps. When he glanced back, the corridor was filled with figures.
Every single one wore his face.